pepfar Archives - Jake Lyell

Post Tagged with: "pepfar"

Leave it to the Experts: Innovative HIV Programs in Malawi

June 30, 2014

We’ve reached a global hinge point in the treatment of HIV. People living with the disease are no longer passive beneficiaries. After more than a decade of receiving health and nutrition training, HIV+ people are often times living healthier lifestyles than many of their negative peers. Catholic Relief Services‘ Expert Client program places trained HIV+ community members in local health facilities where they guide new patients through the rigors of anti-retroviral treatment (ARV). By using their own experience of living with the disease to counsel and mentor, they empower the new patients to live more healthy and productive lives. I recently shot and produced this video for CRS in southern Malawi. The program is funded by USAID.

Magic in the Numbers

January 5, 2012

Not many of us can claim to have saved 100,000 lives. I recently spent a week in Rwanda photographing jointly for the Gates Foundation and the Global Fund, two of the greatest change-makers in global health today. The Gates Foundation is a major contributor to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis. Together they save an estimated 100,000 lives each month. Above, a child receives a polio vaccine in a public health center in Kabuga, Rwanda. While health care is a controversial issue across the world, especially in US politics, we in the West might view it differently if were we dealing with the same epidemics people face in places like Sub-Saharan Africa. Here, UN, PEPFAR or Global Fund-supported public health centers are the primary means for accessing care for diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV. Treatment for such diseases would be far out of reach for most[…]

Saving Grace

September 13, 2010

Two weeks ago, Grace seemed like any other nine year old girl in northeastern Uganda’s Amuria District. She was attending school and helping her mother around the house. Suddenly she was unable to hold down food. The medicine her mother bought at the local clinic was of no help. Now Grace hasn’t eaten in over two weeks and weighs just 13 kilos (28 pounds). Sores on her lips and mouth make any ingestion of food far too painful to bear. Grace’s mother, Sarah Kembi (27), found out that her daughter was HIV positive only two years ago. Since that time Grace has been taking Septrin, a stabilizer drug that, while not an ARV, still reduces the chances of opportunistic infections. Sarah’s husband, Grace’s father, succumbed to AIDS around the same time Mrs. Kembi figured she had better get her daughter tested. Though Grace was likely healthy enough to forgo ARV[…]